I spend too much time reading, writing, and hanging out in the garage to consider myself a devout student of classic cinema, but on cold winter days I sometimes make myself a dry martini and enjoy foreign films from celluloid’s past. Those great works of Godard, Kurosawa, Bergman, and yes, Truffaut and Fellini keep the right hemisphere sharp when I’m spending too much time wondering why a driver’s side parking light is being recalcitrant. As far as I know, those geniuses of film worked alone, secure in their abilities and not wanting or needing input from others. This was not the case with Italy’s Maserati and France’s Citroen in the 1970s, as those two veteran car builders came together (well, Citroen bought Maserati, and that’s not quite the same thing) to build this Maserati Merak.
The motoring world is not unlike a tired old melodrama you might see on Turner Classic Films: companies get together, break up, fight over the kids. Italy’s Maserati and France’s Citroen had a brief, tempestuous fling in the 1970s, and this beautiful Maserati Merak was one of its offspring. Once the inevitable breakup occurred, the Merak must have felt very unwanted, not unlike Antoine Doinel in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and other films. The Merak is too beautiful be tragic, but it’s worth watching.
Citroen bought Maserati in 1968 and set out to build both the Bora and the similar Merak. Unlike the V8-powered Bora, the Merak was a sensible supercar, sharing a three-liter dual-overhead-cam V6 with the space-age Citroen SM. The Merak also shared that car’s five-speed transaxle, but instead of driving the front wheels as it did in the SM, the whole unit was modified and placed in the middle of the basic Bora platform, creating the Merak. This didn’t make for a fire-breathing combination, as U.S. versions only made around 180 horsepower, which was only good for zero-to-sixty times in the nine-second range. That wasn’t exactly supercar performance, but 1974 (in the case of our featured car) wasn’t exactly a time where you could open a Maserati up on the highway with impunity, unless you were competing in the Cannonball Rally. The Merak was thousands cheaper, too, so it outsold the Bora three-to-one.
Since the V6 was smaller than the V8 in the Bora, Maserati added a +2 rear seat to the Merak; while it was virtually unusable by humans, it might have made for a nice shelf. I found the Merak seen here in the car show area of the local antique festival of all places. A little poking around online revealed that it was sold at a Pennsylvania classic car dealer that provided a few pictures I was missing, including the engine shot and the back seat shown above.
One of the minor complaints about the Merak was that the steering wheel and instrument panel were lifted straight from the SM, leading to an oddly French motif for such a sensuous Italian mid-engine sports car.
When De Tomaso bought Maserati from a bankrupt Citroen in 1975, they almost immediately replaced the instrument panel and steering wheel with something more befitting of the Merak’s image. The 1980 Merak SS shown above is such an example.
Perhaps the primary reason for the Merak’s relative “popularity” was that it looked very similar to a Bora; however, it was not quite the same. From the B-pillar back, the Merak took on a lighter, if not a more graceful, shape. The engine compartment cover was flat with a Continental-like spare tire “hump,” and while there’s a vague Ferrari Dino look about the rear-end styling, the Merak, in my opinion, appears to be missing something.
On the other hand, the Bora does not, as its glassed-in engine compartment is better aligned to the front half of the car, in my opinion. And while both cars must be absolutely awful to maintain, at least the Merak’s engine is a little more accessible.
The designer of both cars was that jack-of-all-trades Giorgetto Giugiaro, and Maserati was so proud of this that they put his name right on the side of the car. I’m constantly amazed by Giugiaro’s range. In addition to the Merak, the Bora, the Ghibli, and countless other sports cars such as the Iso Grifo and Alfa Romeo GTV, he may have even had something to do with the Lamborghini Miura. And then he designed the Volkswagen Golf and the Scirocco. Give it to the man. Range.
My photos suggest that a local imported car dealer currently owns the Merak. It’s not posted for sale on its website, so it’s possible that the owner bought it for their collection, or perhaps they’re simply enjoying it for a while before putting it on the lot. The undercarriage shots from the previous selling dealer show a car that’s in very nice condition. I’d buy it too if I had Merak money, or if I didn’t have the propensity to hoard other cars.
It’s extremely uncommon to see classic Italian sports cars in my bailiwick, and although I’m not as bowled over by the Merak as I am by a Miura (or even a Ghibli), one must admit that the 1960s and ’70s constituted a golden age of front- and mid-engined sports cars. Like those classic films from that era, beauty was in the air, even if it took a few dissimilar elements to create it.
Related CC Reading
Cohort Outtake: Maserati Merak – The Citroën of Supercars by PN
Curbside Classic: 1977 Maserati Merak SS – Moustaches, Green Balls And Flying Buttresses by Tatra87
I’ll launch from your connection to post-war European films (with Kurosawa in there for good measure) by saying that it’s always good, and cleansing, to have something entirely different than your usual fare. And this wacky French-Italian offspring definitely constitutes “something different”.
I never fail to get a laugh from the goofball radio placement in this generation of Citroen, and of course the unmistakably odd steering wheel (the weirdest thing ever, at least until Tesla got into the game). Also, it’s hard to imagine who approved the continental-like spare tire hump. Finally, someone in Italy must have had a really bad day when he was informed that this car couldn’t come into the US without those black front bumper protrusions.
What a thing to run into at an antique show!
Yeah, those bumpers really don’t help.
The Citroen SM had an even weirder radio placement, face-up vertically in the center console. In this photo, you can also see the SM’s unusual manual shifter gate — a chrome cylinder that rolls fore/aft, with a slot for sideways movement. I wonder if the Merak has the same, just concealed by the leather boot?
My favorite part is how you found it at an event where it could sit next to a lifted Bronco II. 🙂
I will confess that my tastes in both classic films and cars tends toward those that are older and more domestic. However, I am not against taking in the occasional dubbed foreign film or the occasional 70’s semi-super car. That back seat is actually kind of amazing – not for comfort, but for the fact that anyone might be tempted to sit in it at all.
It was definitely out of place. The show has the usual fare that you can expect at any midwestern car show; my “Big Blue” is even a little out of place (although there are a few early ’50s cars here and there).
Italy’s Maserati and France’s Citroen had a brief, tempestuous fling in the 1970s, and this beautiful Maserati Merak was one of its offspring. Once the inevitable breakup occurred, the Merak must have felt very unwanted, not unlike Antoine Doinel in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and other films.
I dunno, did Antoine Doinel’s parents get back together four and a half decades after their brief tempestuous fling?
I can’t keep track of all these corporate mergers; I didn’t even think of that.
I think I’d rather have the Citroen SM.
Very interesting. This is the first time I’ve seen a Merak with this bulge in the bonnet (for the spare wheel). The European version didn’t have that.
IIRC, the American-market cars got that spare tire placement and hump due to catalytic converters taking up the space where Euro-spec Meraks stored the spare.
Cool car.
The pop-ups on this site are almost too many to take! And when you scroll down to read through comments, it keeps popping up like I want to reply to every one of them.
Okay, I’m through whining now. I know you have to pay the bills. . .
There being no RHD SMs, RHD Meraks got the Bora’s cockpit.
I’ve seen the stainless steel “frisbee” hubcaps fitted to the Campagnolo wheels used on the early (1971-1975) Boras advertised for US$2000 for a set for four. I don’t know if there’s a record price for “second-hand hubcaps” but that might set the mark.
Four-lug wheels? On an Italian exotic? I guess that’s the French heritage coming out.
Renault had some three-lug wheels, because spending money for another stud and nut per wheel would be extravagant.
Here in the USA, four-lug wheels denoted the bottom-of-the-range Penalty Box, limping along with a four-or-six popper. And as we know the Merak was…wait a minute…
….Bora also had four-lug wheels. I’d never noticed that.
I used to think about that when I was a kid; my parents’ Fox Body Mustangs and Thunderbirds all had four-lug wheels, and I remember that some performance-minded owners would convert them to five-lugs. In reality, has there ever been a documented case where four-lugs weren’t safe? I thought it was cheesy too, but in retrospect…
Good god, it’s got a continental kit! That’s as dispiriting as finding out the Truffaut or Fellini you’ve found online is dumb-down dubbed! I’ve never been entirely convinced that the Merak is such a pretty thing, and the bulge does not assist in its favor.
The gearbox is the five-speed adaptation of the ’50’s box used in the longitudinally-engined front-drive Citroen DS, and isn’t in the middle of the car here: it’s behind the V6 (which is wedged up longitudinally beyond the back seats). How on earth they made the gearchange possible without it being some reverse-pattern weirdy when thus turned about 180 degrees is beyond my limited abilities to contemplate.
L’Argent de Poche (either Small Change or Pocket Money) is Truffaut’s humanist best. It’s no more than a day in the life of a village located in the geographical centre of France in 1976, mainly centred on the kids, but it’s quite wonderful, and has one scene involving a baby that’ll have you scared to death. It is, as it were, his Maserati A6GCS, the finest-looking and hottest car the company ever made.
Strangely, I must now go and satisfy a hankering for pizza with cream freche.
I love his early work “Shoot the Piano Player” as well. Would that be a 3500 GT? 🙂
Nicely done! And yes. (My love of the ’76 film is purely emotional, and I doubt a true aficianado regards it so well, though Roger Ebert did give it his film of the year, so I cling to that like the US insurance lobby once made hideous square rubber bumper boobs cling to US market Meraks).
To my eyes the SM dash is much better looking